Chang'e Flies to the Moon
Ancient Times • From "Folk Legend"
Story Summary
In ancient times, ten suns scorched the earth until the divine archer Houyi shot down nine, saving humanity. As reward, the Queen Mother granted him an elixir of immortality. When his jealous apprentice tried to steal it, Houyi's wife Chang'e swallowed the potion to protect it, floating to the moon where she became its eternal goddess. Separated from her beloved, she found companionship in the jade rabbit who pounds herbs and Wu Gang who endlessly cuts a self-healing tree. The tale embodies eternal love, sacrifice, and the poetic melancholy of moonlight.
The Legend
During the reign of Emperor Yao, ten suns arose together, blazing across the heavens until rivers boiled and mountains cracked. The divine archer Houyi, moved by mortal suffering, climbed Kunlun Mountain and with his scarlet bow, shot down nine suns leaving only one to nurture life. Celebrated as a hero, Houyi was bestowed the Pill of Immortality by the Queen Mother of the West. Yet this gift bore a bittersweet fate—consuming it would grant eternity but sever earthly bonds. Houyi, deeply devoted to his wife Chang'e, hid the elixir, choosing mortal love over divine solitude. Their happiness bloomed like peach blossoms in spring, yet shadows lurked; Houyi’s envious apprentice Fengmeng coveted the pill, whispering treachery like a serpent in the garden.
On the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, under the full moon’s silver gaze, Fengmeng forced his way into their home while Houyi hunted. Chang'e, cornered like a startled phoenix, faced a harrowing choice: let the elixir fall into wicked hands or consume it herself. With resolve as steady as the eternal mountains, she swallowed the pill. Immediately, her body grew weightless, rising through the night sky as if lifted by celestial music. Houyi returned to witness his wife ascending—her white robes flowing like moonbeams, her sorrowful eyes reflecting their last earthly farewell. He chased her flight, heart shattered, but the heavens drew her beyond reach. Thus Chang'e became the Moon Goddess, her eternal palace veiled in cold jade and silver mist.
In her lunar abode, Chang'e found neither joy nor peace. The Moon Palace gleamed with pearlesque towers and corridors of crystallized frost, yet silence hung heavier than mountain stones. Her only companions were the diligent Jade Rabbit, who tirelessly pounded herbs in a mortar, seeking to recreate the elixir of reunion, and Wu Gang, a mortal exiled for offending the gods, forever cutting a self-healing cassia tree. Each chop echoed futility, mirroring Chang'e’s endless longing. On clear nights, she would play her zither, melodies drifting to earth where Houyi offered honeyed fruits and cakes to the moon—a tradition now known as the Mid-Autumn Festival. Though separated by cosmic design, their love endured in rituals and poetry, teaching that true devotion transcends even the vastness of the cosmos.